


waterfall

by ang3lba3



Series: A Disease Called Friendship [6]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Humanstuck, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Relapse, Trans Karkat Vantas, non-sexual nudity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 06:31:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6363268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ang3lba3/pseuds/ang3lba3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stepping under the water is glorious. It is a revelation, it is absolution of your sins, it washes away the grime and liquids and filth from your skin and leaves you new and isn’t that just a miracle right there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	waterfall

**Author's Note:**

> so quick backstory: it's post game, they've all been reborn as humans, their lusii are their parents, and they all have their memories.
> 
> less essential: i stress wrote this so it's extremely self indulgent pale angsty fluff.
> 
> on tumblr at [this gorgeous blog ;)](ang3lba3.tumblr.com)

Someone taps you on the shoulder, and you startle. It’s just Karkat, and you relax, even when he starts yelling about something. He speaks too fast, and in the wrong language, so you pat his face gently until he slows down to soft fuming, cheeks flushed with blood and veins prominent on his forehead.

“What be motherfucking harshing my best brother’s chill?” you ask, tugging at him to sit next to you. He ignores the request. Height advantage is one thing he doesn’t give up easily, you’ve found.

This Karkat isn’t even as tall as the gray skinned troll Karkat was. He’s tiny, although you wouldn’t say it to him because he’d probably go something stupid and dangerous to prove that he isn’t too tiny to be strong.

“I  _ said,  _ which you would have noticed if you listened the first time, that you’re staining our couch with your filthy fucking clothes and you need a shower,” Karkat grates the words out through clenched teeth, like it physically hurts him to speak in English, and to go slow enough that you can understand him through the haze of the handful of pills you popped in your mouth not two minutes ago.

“Aw, motherfucker, my bad,” you say softly, glancing down at yourself. The front of your shirt is soaked in red, and you’d worry it’s blood for a moment but it’s not, by the smell of it it’s ketchup. Your legs are wet and the cloth is brown with mud that is too fresh to cake. You haven’t been outside in two days, and you wonder absently what happened.

Karkat sighs, looking impossibly put upon, and lifts you off the couch and to standing with his hands around your upper arms and a good foot and a half of space between you.

“Thank you, brother,” you say syrup slow, and pap his cheek gratefully. He flushes again, and you smile. He tries so hard not to, but his coloring is just too goddamn pale and it gives him away every single time. 

“Get in the fucking shower and fucking clean yourself off,” he says instead, voice lacking the bite that should follow with that kind of vocabulary. He pauses. “Can you walk by yourself?”

You ponder that a moment, take a step away from the firm grip of his fingers, and decide that you can make it. 

“I sure as hell can,” you say, and begin to carefully shuffle your way towards the bathroom. You would normally shed pieces of clothing as you go, but you don’t think it’s a good idea to be splattering your mess all over the carpeting. It’s best to wait for tile before you do that kind of thing. 

Karkat hovers the whole way behind you and helps you undress when you fumble at the buttons on your shirt. You hate buttons. You can’t remember why you’d be wearing a white button down shirt, or why you’re not wearing your customary spotted leggings but instead black suit pants.

“I’m all dressed up,” you say wonderingly, but you don’t turn to the mirror to see, because it’s ruined now anyways and you don’t like seeing yourself in the aftermath of getting so fucked up you lose time.

“Yeah,” Karkat says, and his hands pause for a moment on the button of your pants. He sighs, and undoes it, motions familiar as he unzips you and helps you wiggle out of your pants. He doesn’t say anything about your lack of underwear or the fact that there’s a used condom on your dick. The outside of it is coated in something orange.

You don’t want to know.

He guides your hand down to pull it off, and then nudges you until you step out of your pants. You do, and then make your way unsteadily to the shower. It’s comforting to hear the sound of Karkat tugging his own clothing off, the  _ swish  _ of fabric against skin and the soft  _ clAck  _ of when the zipper on his hoodie hit the floor.

You turn the shower to the right temperature, not as hot as he likes it but hotter than you do. A lot of life with Karkat is in the middle like that. 

Stepping under the water is glorious. It is a revelation, it is absolution of your sins, it washes away the grime and liquids and filth from your skin and leaves you new and isn’t that just a miracle right there.

You mean - it isn’t doing great at that without scrubbing, and you don’t feel like you can move your arms well enough to do that, but it’s the thought that counts. Karkat steps in after you and the shower curtain shuts behind him and he gets to work cleaning you.

This is no different than the thousands of other times he’s done it, and it is comforting in its familiarity. He starts with your face, hands careful, forehead creased with concern and concentration.

“You look like someone died,” you say, finally placing his mannerisms. He was just like this after Jack Noir’s death was broadcasted on every news outlet 24/7 - the infamous mob boss put down at last. Karkat never got over his connection with the carpacian, not after reincarnation to a whole new life and a whole new universe. He kept up with the stories about him rather like you would check the social media of a not so recent ex.

“Someone did,” he replied, voice far too soft. There’s not a lot about your own personal miracle that’s soft. His body is bony with deceivingly wiry muscle, and his face nearly gaunt. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t eat enough, or because he doesn’t sleep enough. It might be both, or maybe it’s just the immense amount of mental health issues he’s struggling with.

You hum in acknowledgement of him saying something, but you don’t ask. You close your eyes and tip your face back as he turns the spray so it washes the soap from your skin. You’re not sure you want to know who it was just yet, who it was that you broke a six month stretch of sobriety for.

He doesn’t tell you, just scrubs your neck clean with a washcloth and steadily works his way over your arms, your chest, your back. You move when and where he directs you, and when you’re finally clean he turns you around so you can return the favor.

There’s something almost unbearably intimate about washing Karkat, there always has been. It’s one of the very rare times he lets you take care of him like a moirail should. Defenses come down when the clothes come off, you’ve found. Layers are armor, barbed wire that keeps others from touching but cuts deeper with every movement.

“You’re one beautiful motherfucker,” you murmur, rubbing soap into the skin of his scarred inner arms. He flinches with his whole body. You’ve been as close as two pale mates can be since three years old, and twenty years later he still cries when you tell him what a blessing he is.

But tonight you’re not up to that, not up to breaking past his self hatred to try and heal that fucked up part of him. You won’t finish what you started there, will let it go. There’s no energy for that tonight.

“Tell me who died,” you whisper, barely loud enough to be heard over the running water. You’ve finished washing him, and you’re not even standing in the spray fully. It beats down on your back, soothing warmth, runs down your legs in thick rivulets. 

He presses himself close to you, breasts squishing against you, and you wrap your arms around him without prompting. 

“Your dad,” he finally says, hands rubbing soothing circles into your back.

It hits you like a punch in the face, and you stagger, slipping on the tile a little before he gently lowers you to the bathtub floor. He reaches up and twists the knob until the water stops and there’s no sound left but the dripping, then plugs the tub up and turns the handle for the faucet.

“Did I do it?” you whisper. “Did I kill him again?”

Karkat’s face crumples, not for himself, but for you, and he folds you up in his tiny strong arms.

“Not on purpose,” he says quietly. “It was a car accident. He was drunk, it was no one’s fault.”

“He never forgave me,” you say. “I thought I had time to make him forgive me but he…”

Karkat hugs you tighter, like he can squish you so tight and so compact that the bad stuff will just squeeze right out of you and slide down the drain. The only thing it feels like will come out is vomit.

“I don’t…” you say, and let him hush you because it feels better than feeling that sentence would have. 

You don’t know if you’ve got it in you to try to go anywhere but back to a bottle, but Karkat gets you out of the shower when the water dribbling down turns cold, and you let yourself be cussed into a bed - not your own bed, you’re frankly kind of scared of what your room looks like right now - and let him starfish his body on top of you. The goal is to press as much of him as possible against as much of you as possible, and it normally makes you smile because he fails at it so badly what with size disadvantage, but today you just feel numb outside of the points where his hot skin touches your rapidly cooling body. 

“You’re going to be okay,” Karkat says, and he pulls back from where he was shoved face first in your neck and instead props himself up on his elbows to look you in the face more seriously than any other motherfucker got the right to be when he’s that cute. “I’ll  _ make  _ you okay.”

“Wouldn’t motherfucking doubt your ability to be up and making miracles happen for a moment, best friend,” you say quietly in return. It’s somewhat true - you don’t doubt his ability to make miracles happen.

You do doubt his ability to make this one in particularly come to pass, though.

“Hey,” he says, slaps you lightly, admonishingly. “Listen up, fucktwat. We’ve been here before,  and what did I do?”

“Made me okay,” you say, avoiding his eyes, because if he looks in them he’s going to know that you think you don’t  _ deserve  _ to be okay, and then he’ll get that pinched look that means he’s about to kiss you until you feel better, and you don’t want to feel better right now.

He frowns down at you, and you stare at his chin.

“So what am I gonna do this time?” he demands.

“I dunno if-”

“Hey,” he says, softer, tilting your head up until you’re looking in his eyes and your neck hurts. “What am I gonna do this time?”

Looking at him like this, it’s hard not to believe every word he says. You want to, so bad. You want to so bad that you open your mouth and say, “Make me okay.”

He lets you tilt your neck back down and then kisses you so sweetly that you start crying, which was probably his plan all along, because he takes it in stride and kisses your stupid snotty tear covered face until nothing more is coming out.

“It’ll be okay,” he says as he tucks your face into the hollow of his neck, where life is less complicated and less bright and less painful. “We’ll be okay.”

And the most miraculous part is that you sort of believe him.

**Author's Note:**

> on tumblr at [this gorgeous blog ;)](ang3lba3.tumblr.com)


End file.
